Retail wine sales soar but wineries still suffer revenue slump
Tri-county wine tasting rooms and restaurants likely won’t reopen to visitors soon, but consumers are still buying and drinking wine. The Nielsen Co. reported that wine sales at grocery and drug stores soared 27 percent in the week ending March 14 when compared to both the previous and the year-ago week. Wineries are getting higher Read More →
Demand spikes at tri-county food banks due to COVID-19 layoffs
In the past month, the FoodBank of Santa Barbara County has quadrupled the amount of food it’s distributing to members of the community. Even still, families will line up hours in advance for food distribution, and supplies will be gone within 15 minutes of the first box being passed out. “The scale is different than Read More →
COVID-19 pandemic killing tri-county tourism
An unprecedented level of uncertainty has gripped the travel and tourism industry across the Tri-Counties, forcing temporary shutdowns for some and a re-evaluation of plans for companies, workers and tourism promotion agencies. No one knows when business will go back to normal, and it’s hitting the tourism industry hard when bookings should be strong. Visit Read More →
Tri-county hospital rebuilds make room for beds
The tri-county region, like the rest of California, is likely to face shortages of hospital beds and other medical resources during the coronavirus pandemic, but the bed shortage could be made less severe by the region’s recent hospital building boom. Until the pandemic, parts of the region had an oversupply of potential hospital beds — Read More →
COVID-19 challenging for tri-county spas and salons
Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, the region’s salon and spa businesses had witnessed a transformation of their business model, moving toward memberships and express services as customers integrated them into a broad approach to wellness. In recent weeks, though, the heavily touch-based businesses have been among the hardest hit by shelter-in-place orders Read More →
Our view: COVID-19 is spreading but difficult to forecast
After watching the slow but steadily increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the Tri-Counties, we are left with a single question: Is San Luis Obispo County an emerging hot spot for coronavirus or is it a harbinger of things to come? As coronavirus numbers have risen past the 100 mark across the region, SLO County Read More →
Small businesses forced to adapt to COVID-19 outbreak
Small businesses on the Central Coast are finding ways to adapt to sweeping new coronavirus restrictions, staying connected to customers even as they keep them at arm’s length. Whether it’s through online orders and curbside pickup or careful limits to the number of customers in a store, business owners are changing the way their products Read More →
